Here's What No One Tells You About Experience Is The Best Teacher.
EXPERIENCE IS
THE BEST TEACHER
Outline:
1. Experience teaches how to live.
2. We learn by experience. (a) Young people, (b)
and older people.
3. It is we who make the lessons of experience
pleasant or unpleasant.
Experience, as everybody knows, is the best teacher. Its core aim is to teach us how to live. Nobody can teach us this as well as it can. It is a severe schoolmistress. It sets us tough lessons, punishes harshly who are distracted and stupid, and charges very high fees. But what it teaches, it teaches in a mode as thorough as possible. We never forget its lessons. The nastiest of it is that we sometimes learn its lessons too late. The man who breaks all the rules of health in his youth by self-indulgence and associate learns at last when his health is ruined for life, the right way of living; but too late to be of any employer to him.
It may be that we should be cheerful to learn how
to live well from the experience of our fathers, as recorded in books, or as
taught by the advice of our elders. But one way or other many young people do
not. They mock warnings and advice and go their own way. You may advise a
child against playing with matches, but he does not believe you until he
scorches his hands. After that "the burnt child dreads the fire".
You may tell a boy not to meddle with stray dogs,
but he turns a deaf ear till he gets a spiteful bite from one. After that
"once bitten, twice shy". He has to learn from experience, and it's coaching
he is not apt to forget. In the same way, older people have to learn for
themselves, often by sour experience, such old truths as,
"Honesty is the best policy",
"All is not gold that glitters",
"A rolling stone gathers no moss",
"He who touches pitch is defiled",
"No pains, no gains",
"Waste not, want not",
"Cut your coat according to your cloth",
"A fool and his money are soon parted",
"Look before you leap", and
"The way of transgressors is hard".
In such old proverbs, much knowledge gained by
experience has been stored. It is by anguish we learn patience; by facing peril
we learn courage; by mourning, we learn sympathy; by mistakes, we learn wisdom.
But all its lessons are not distasteful. Whether
they are lovely or unlikable depends on us. For we can just as simply learn
from experience that honesty pays in the long run, as that dishonesty does not;
that restraint maintains health, as that surplus ruins body and soul; that sympathy
to others brings us joy, as that egotism breeds unhappiness; and that hard work
brings success, as that idleness means failure.
In short, experience shapes us into what we are. It is
on what our achievement in life depends.
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